


Echo

by JoAsakura



Series: Devils and Humans Cry [2]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Dante goes shopping, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24038563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: Dante has been training for this mission for weeks: Buy groceries
Relationships: Dante/Nero (Devil May Cry)
Series: Devils and Humans Cry [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639852
Comments: 5
Kudos: 70





	Echo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurnItAllDownDahling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurnItAllDownDahling/gifts).



> I've been thinking about this for a little while.

The whole thing is absurd, Nero thinks as he watches Dante write out the shopping list like he’s scribing a sacred text. His handwriting has gotten better- still shaky, he clutches the pen like a knife, but better – and he can see the big awkward letters spelling out MILK and EGGS and PIZZA and STRAWBERY forming on the paper.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” He asks, a weird knot settling right behind his sternum.

“Nero,” Dante peers up at him through the snowy veil of his hair. His voice will never be right, always be soft and cracked and coarse-grit sandpaper on the edge of a silver bell. “It’s time. We’ve been training for this.” He doesn’t stutter when he speaks slowly, and there’s a tinge of pride in his little smirk.

“I can wait in the van in the parking lot,” Nero tries again, knowing how ridiculous this conversation is and unable to stop having it. Dante is like a diamond. Impenetrable unless you hit him at a fracture point. And he has so many of them still. He’s let his beard grow back in a bit, the frost of rough hair at his jaw hides the gaunt edges of it, and tattoos cover so many of the scars now. It’s true he has to have them done by a shifty wizard Nero met on a job and they get redone weekly because Dante’s body devours the ink like a plant with water, but they tell a dense, colourful story of rebirth over the ruin Mundus left on his skin.

Snowfield hair pulled back and glasses, he looks like an aging hipster, almost. The Sparda rests against him, reformed into a black cane topped with a leering, grotesque skull of red crystal. It ruins the effect somewhat.

“Nero,” Dante sets the pen down and smooths the faintly crumpled sheet. “It’s a short walk. I am a grown demon-person. I know how to use your debit card… now.” He winces a little bit at the memory of tearing the ATM off the side of one of Fortuna’s re-blossoming banks one night. “I’ve got this.”

The flip phone Nero hands him is designed for the elderly. It has exactly 3 preprogrammed numbers in it. “Take your phone. Call me if you… if you need anything.”

With a dramatic sigh, Dante puts the phone in a battered leather bag, along with the list and his chewed-up pen. “Yes, mom.” Standing, he’s not much taller than Nero, not in his human form at least, but the weight of the Beast rides on his shoulders like a monstrous shadow. Then he smiles again, that aggravating little smirk, and presses a kiss to Nero’s forehead. “I’ll be fine.”

~~

The store is new, brightly lit and filled with old people and young workers on their breaks. Instinctively, Dante hunches down, but he can still feel their eyes on him as he pushes the squeaky little cart through the lush jungle of kale and oranges and purple sweet potatoes. Some chipper pop tune wafts through the murmur of sounds and he puts the strawberries in the cart, ticking it off the list like a win.

He knows, rationally, they only **see** a man with a cane, pushing a shopping cart. But he also knows the howling monkeys that live in the base of their brains smell something different. He thinks human thoughts as he tries to lose himself in the different kinds of milk on the cool shelves in dairy. It seems to help.

Until he catches scent of something pungent, the acrid scent of burning meat and his heartbeat jumps. One hand curls on the cane’s leering skull, and he scans the aisle, looking for the threat. He can control himself in a fight. He can be _good_. He’s fought demons as himself a hundred times now. ( _With Nero. Always with Nero._ ) It smells like ash and charred flesh and his own aches under the ink, remembering. He can taste his teeth in the back of his mouth, razor-edged. He can hear the lights overhead click and hum and click and hum and hum and smell the metal and false-cold seeping from the walls.

He can taste his own blood in memory. He can taste _Mundus_ in the back of his throat. He is alone and he is small and broken and cold and hot and he is not. He is not small, he has teeth and claws that will rend and tear.

 _Mundus is dead, Mundus is **dead**. Vergil killed him. Be good. Be good. _He’s not sure if the Sparda whispers that in his ear or his own conscience does.

In his other hand, a container ruptures beneath his extending claws as he watches a group of employees struggle a burning chicken out of a heater. One of them makes an apologetic noise at him and goes to get a mop and some towels as the milk runs down his leg. A few feet away, someone’s grandmother is staring at him, wide-eyed, clutching a tub of yogurt to her chest.

Music plays overhead, cheery and bright.

He smiles and she faints dead away.

~~

Nero is surreptitiously lingering outside the shop when he comes home, trying to look like he’s not trying to look for Dante.

Dante can hear the thrum of his power a block away and he can see the nascent glimmer of the younger man’s Trigger twitching nervously around him as he approaches.

“Why are you covered in milk?” Is the first thing Nero says to him, grateful he doesn’t have to say any of the other things he’d been worried about. “I didn’t hear any sirens and…”

Dante hands him one of the bags. “It was fine,” he says slowly. He presses his forehead to Nero’s for a long moment, breathing in the scent of home that clings to him. “It was fine.”


End file.
